Project for community-based mental health service to begin next year in Hlainethaya Tsp

To promote mental health services, the Mental Health Hospital under the Ministry of Health is planning to implement its community-based health project in Hlinethaya, a most populated township in Yangon, next year with the aid of a foreign organization, according to the hospital.
The main objective of the project is to reduce risks of depression that is most common around the world. The WHO estimated that depression will stand 1st for global burden of mental disorders in 2030.
The earlier self-reliant pilot project for community-based health care services has been implemented in Kyauktan Township in Yangon since two years ago and it produces successful outcomes, Prof Dr Win Aung Myint, Department of Mental Health, University of Medicine-1, said.
He added that the mobile medical teams of the hospital are now providing its continuous medical treatment to about 500 patients with chronic mental illness in Hlinethaya and Kawhmu townships twice a month, planning to increase its services in Thongwa and Hmawby townships, the outside areas of Yangon City.
In order to reduce treatment gap in the country, the Mental Health Hospital is holding discussions with the World Mental Health Survey Consortium to make a nationwide mental-related survey in Myanmar.
The WHO survey said that the huge mental health treatment gap is in both developed and developing countries. There are 70 to 80 per cent of people with mental disorders in developing countries.
According to the small scale survey in Yangon, more than 80 patients out of 1,000 have mental health problems in Myanmar in which only 10 per cent of patients under mental health treatment, the professor said.
He also urged the families who have mental patients not to be shy to bring the patients to the hospital and not to discriminate against them.